that guys still alive?

goil from top design works there

i knew someone who interned there. she worked 5 hours overtime on her first day.

having worked for a firm that served as architect of record for a stern job, i can say that their drawings were not much. but their construction administration is a tight and focused and serious business.

whatever you think of their design work, pro or con, once it gets to getting the thing built, they're watching everything and making sure it's right. i admired the architect with whom we worked very much, despite a little puerile complaining every now and then.

i'm guessing it's a pretty disciplined crew around there.

I interned there for about 6 months several years ago. Overall it was a good experience and a great place to observe how a firm operates and to learn to navigate within architecture firm culture.
it was a very crowded office - most interns didn't have our own workstations and kind of had to work wherever there was room or at the desks of people who were out at meetings. There wasn't much continuity in what I worked on, it just depended who needed help that day or where there was room for me to work.
I'm surprised at the post about the friend who worked 5 hours of overtime on her first day. When I was there this was discouraged. If people were working a lot of overtime then they'd get yelled at for not managing their time well, or their managers would get yelled at for not managing the staff well. I worked some overtime, but less than at some other firms.
One downside was that there was kind of an unofficial class structure in the firm. A lot of the people who work there got there because they knew Stern or somebody else high up in the firm personally, whether from having been their student or working with them somewhere else or something like that. Those people were treated differently than those of us who more or less got hired as unknowns. It was clear, and sometimes overtly stated, that some of those people who got there through connections were being groomed for higher positions and long-term careers there while others were treated as interchangable and temporary whether or not that was their own plan.
It's an office with a lot of hierarchy and interns didn't really have much input in things. Interns were expected to be seen and not heard.
One other problem was that some of the architects didn't want to utilize interns at all. There are so many interns and they come and go so fast that some people felt it was not efficient to use them for anything because it would take too long to get them started on things and answer their questions and that it was just easier to do everything themselves than to involve us. I had a lot of respect for the people there and learned a lot from them about design and management, but the firm does have a lot of personalites bordering on "control freak" and that limits the opportunities for younger people to take on much sometimes.
If you're an observant type who will be interested in learning from what's going on around you then it will be a good thing. But if you are restless to be getting your design ideas out, or if you have a naturally boat-rocking personality then it might be a frustrating place.

so as an undergraduate summer intern, who wouldn't really expect to have much input anyway, is this a good place for an internship experience? I mean, at the very least I have heard the people that work there are all pretty intelligent and would be good people to learn from.

you'll probably have to make that leap yourself, fromj, since it's a very personal decision. who knows whether it's the perfect choice? but i'd say you won't be making a mistake, anyway.

don't work for free. (general rule, imo.)

i dont think they let you wear t-shirts to work.